My thoughts on Disney: Now that we’re back from Spring Break and a long stay at the House of the Mouse I thought I’d collected my thoughts enough to put them down in one place in a (hopefully) coherent fashion. Disney can be overwhelming, there’s a lot of information in many different places, between what friends, neighbors and various other blogs say is a “must do” and finding out what actually works for you can be vastly different. This is just the view of a regular dude....

Some of you guys may have seen in the random comments thread that the Cruiser family might be taking on a little girl as a foster kid (and probably later adoption). I figure instead of dropping my thought in the world of randomness I'd try to keep them tidy and in one place.

Anyway, I got a call today from a lady with child services, she'll be coming by Monday (27th) for a home visit, so the Mrs, Miss and I will be frantically cleaning the house for it to be presentable. It's not...

It was with great relief that Victor (Hugo) Patel watched the massive rocket riding on a column of flame and exhaust as it cleared the launch pad. The Energia stack looked somewhat ungainly and graceful at once as the stack began to pirouette towards the launch heading as directed by the flight computer. Eight minutes, Victor reminded himself, if I can make it eight minutes I’ll be OK. Behind him there was a team of people enjoying a mix of hamburgers, fries, hot dogs and bratwursts, as the Phantom...

Victor (Hugo) Patel leaned against the railing of the CSSC assembly building roof and did his best not to be awestruck. After several days with not enough sleep, he finally looked at the Energia rocket with its Buran-T payload container as it was crawling its way out to the big pad at Carl Sagan Space Center. Facilities personnel mixed about with RSC and Roscosmos people checking, rechecking and final checking every single item on a long punch-list of things that would need going over again...

After a flurry of well executed phone calls, emails, notifications and exchanged bottles of alcohol, the crew of Phantom Manufacturing that was loosely attached to SRC Polygon had managed to truck or fly in several tons of white sand, miles of colored lights and paper lanterns and copious amounts of booze. Nearly everyone at the facility that wasn’t actively involved in the after-hours operation was milling about the cabanas and enjoying the ad-hoc beach party that John Kirby had arranged prior...